“But nothing in this world happens by chance. I cannot begin the story like «by chance I came across a box full of negatives.» This is simply not true. If this box has survived a number of changes of flat, two floods and a fire, it means that it was important to me, I guarded it, I took care of it.

In the 80s I worked in a research institute, journalism was far from me. I had one hobby: photographing. I had a «Любитель» camera with which I roamed about the neighboring courtyards. As if I photographed with a hidden camera. The reflex viewfinder of Любитель – they say it was copied from Rolleflex – was perfectly suitable for that.

If I wanted to put it in today’s language, I would say I worked on a project with the work title «Moscow’s courtyards”. This is the world in which I am rooted, the old Moscow where I was born, where I grew up, in the house at the corner of Griboedov street and Stopani pereulok. At the sight of these images the respected visitor perhaps thinks: how much ugliness was collected by the author! But old Moscow was exactly like this. On every Saturday morning I simply stepped out of the gate and I walked about the neighboring courtyards. The shock I feel today at the sight of these images comes from seeing how much I have forgot about this world and how much I am already accustomed to the silent Tajiks keeping the streets and courtyards of Moscow clean.

Yes, it was a strange city. A young man in today’s Moscow could think that the photographer was intentionally looking for the traces of decay. But this is not true. This Moscow behind the facades is the true image of my Moscow of that time. Yes, the city, let us put it frankly, was eroded. But it lived! Within the ring of the Sadovoe kolco there lived still a half million people. Yes, Soviet mentality did not favor order and cleanliness. Nevertheless it was somehow very inspiring to live in the old Moscow. The shabbiness of old Moscow was many-colored and enchanting like that of an old manor house. And you know how much it soothes the eye that there are almost no cars? Even those two or three we see are shabby old ones.

But the most important thing: While digitizing these more than twenty years old pictures, I had a feeling as if sitting in a time machine and flying back to the 80s of the last century. Yes, I have also changed. In the old Moscow, twenty years ago, there lived a very different young man, a boy prone to introversion, obsessed with photographing. All right: he could not photograph well. But he had an unsurpassable advantage: that he could remain unobserved. This boy completely merges with his own world and his photos offer to the viewer the unique possibility and special delight to behold on them a faithful print of that world without any photographer’s mannerism.”

Such courtyards, houses, people there were in Budapest of the 80s as well as – with some minor changes – in Madrid and Barcelona of the 50s and 60s. But very few photos like these. These photos needed that attentive way of seeing, devoid of any affectedness, which is also reflected on the images of Tarkovsky. And that in Moscow of the 80s a twenty years old amateur had this way of seeing, it explains why Russian photography is so grandiose today.

Thank you, Irina, for the confirmation. Incidentally, flora has just written something similar in the Hungarian version of the post: „I was a student in Moscow in 1969-70. I have really found in these photos the atmosphere of Moscow of those times as well as that characteristic chaos taking no care of beauty and order, that really human, but depressing and absolutely not cheerful mood…”